This first favorite has been a favorite for a long time, but I recently ran out of my bigger bottle and turned to just grabbing whatever was nearby. Doing so made me realize just why I was so in love with the original! It is the Remove + Nail Polish Remover from Zoya (you can see an old review of it here)! This stuff will remove any and all polishes much easier and better than anything I have tried. I wore a lot of 3 coat polishes recently, which amounts to insanely hard to remove with standard remover, but not with the Zoya! It breaks up pretty much anything without much trouble and wipes the nails nice and clean without causing them too much damage. It also doesn’t have a terribly strong or offensive odor, which is an added bonus. Definintely cannot live without Zoya’s Remove + Polish Remover (and my Ulta is always out of the big bottle lately)!
I guess I’ll stick with nails and something I know I love, but just haven’t been using lately. It’s the Freedom Polymer Top Coat from Julep. This stuff is seriously incredible! I have a full review of it here, but in a nutshell, it dries quickly, is insanely shiny and wears incredibly well! I was trying to use up another top coat that I had which was ok, but when it ran out and I went back to the Julep, I wondered why I didn’t just throw the other stuff away! J Love, love, love the Julep Freedom Polymer Top Coat!
Sticking with nails, I guess I’ll throw in a nail polish. I don’t normally do this since I rarely wear any one polish for very long, but this polish I not only wore for a good chunk of March, I actually took it off when it chipped and immediately reapplied it! I never do that! J It is Illamasqua’s “Venous,” which is a kind of deep kelly green with just a touch of blue that makes it almost, but not quite teal. It’s one of my favorite nail colors. I suppose it’s not all that unusual, but I just love it.
For a facial moisturizer, I recently switched to something new at night that just sounded incredible. It is from a New Zealand company called Antipodes and it is their Vanilla Pod Hydrating Day Cream. Oh. My. God! It smells ridiculously delicious! J And yes, it is a day cream, but I’ve been using it at night. They do make a night cream, but I’m a sucker for anything vanilla scented. I also didn’t want anything too heavy, which night creams often are on my skin. The ingredients between the day and night creams are quite similar, so I just went with the Vanilla and I really love it! If nothing more, it smells like the most deliciously sweet breakfast you can possibly imagine…and it lingers for a bit! J I would describe the scent as kind of a vanilla-y oatmeal drizzled with honey (it does contain Manuka Honey). It really smells good enough to eat. And as for how it works, which should be the really important part, but it just smells so good that I’m not sure I’d care if it was garbage! J Anyway, it has definitely helped with the dry flakiness I've been struggling with recently. I do find that my skin gets a little shiny throughout the night, but most moisturizers cause that with my skin. During the day (I use a different day moisturizer with SPF), I don’t have as much trouble with oil breakthrough as with my previous nighttime moisturizer, and my skin still feels hydrated. Some of that is surely due to my daytime moisturizer, but I feel like my skin is well balanced when I wake up. I can’t say I notice an insane difference in my skin, although it does seem to look slightly better but I’m not sure how much it has to do with the Vanilla Pod Moisturizer. Regardless, I’m completely enjoying the Antipodes Vanilla Pod Hydrating Day Cream and would buy it again and again just to smell it! J
For my hair, I’ve just been sticking to my current hair care routine, which I love, but since I just posted about that here, I don’t want to bore you with it again! J
I do have a favorite not in my hair care routine, but it’s not necessarily a daily use kind of item. It’s the Acure Argan Stem Cell + CoQ10 Dry Shampoo, which I recently reviewed here. Again, I don’t want to bore you with too much repeat information, but it’s a seriously wonderful dry shampoo that totally gets the greasiness out without making my hair dull or causing the dreaded white cast. It’s a fantastic dry shampoo for refreshing the hair! J
Finally, the one and only makeup item that I have this month is Too Faced’s Bulletproof Brows. I’m still getting the hang of using a cream product on my brows, but I really like the shade (I have the Universal Taupe), and it definitely has incredible staying power! We’re talking go to the gym and sweat your ass off without losing your brows kinda power! J It is creamy and blendable, but not overly so. I keep testing the Anastasia version on my hand in stores, and it’s just overly wet and creamy – it seems very difficult to pick up just a tiny amount – and the blonde shade just looks like a weird color. The Too Faced Bulletproof Brows is easy to control, is surprisingly quick to apply, and makes for a beautiful budge-proof natural looking brow. J With my sparse brows, this is quickly becoming a must-have in my arsenal of tricks!!! J
That’s it for March Favorites! Like I said, it’s been a crazy month and there just hasn’t been time for makeup and beauty. Hopefully April will be a little more fun on the beauty front, but for March, I’ve been incredibly low maintenance. I hope this was still somewhat interesting and I hope you’ve all had a fantastic month!
